Exponential Adoption of Battery Electric Cars

The adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) may significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by road transport. However, there is wide disagreement as to how soon battery electric vehicles will play a major role in overall transportation. Focusing on battery electric passenger cars, we here analyze BEV adoption across 17 individual countries, Europe, and the World, and consistently find exponential growth trends. Modeling-based estimates of future adoption given past trends suggests system-wide adoption substantially faster than typical economic analyses have proposed so far. For instance, we estimate the majority of passenger cars in Europe to be electric by about 2031. Within regions, the predicted times of mass adoption are largely insensitive to model details. Despite significant differences in current electric fleet sizes across regions, their growth rates consistently indicate fast doubling times of approximately 15 months, hinting at radical economic and infrastructural consequences in the near future

Quantifying two-way influences between the Arctic and mid-latitudes through regionally increased CO2 concentrations in coupled climate simulations

In which direction is the influence larger: from the Arctic to the mid-latitudes or vice versa? To answer this question, CO2 concentrations have been regionally increased in different latitudinal belts, namely in the Arctic, in the northern mid-latitudes, everywhere outside of the Arctic and globally, in a series of 150 year coupled model experiments with the AWI Climate Model. This method is applied to allow a decomposition of the response to increasing CO2 concentrations in different regions. It turns out that CO2 increase applied in the Arctic only is very efficient in heating the Arctic and that the energy largely remains in the Arctic. In the first 30 years after switching on the CO2 forcing some robust atmospheric circulation changes, which are associated with the surface temperature anomalies including local cooling of up to 1 °C in parts of North America, are simulated. The synoptic activity is decreased in the mid-latitudes. Further into the simulation, surface temperature and atmospheric circulation anomalies become less robust. When quadrupling the CO2 concentration south of 60° N, the March Arctic sea ice volume is reduced by about two thirds in the 150 years of simulation time. When quadrupling the CO2 concentration between 30 and 60° N, the March Arctic sea ice volume is reduced by around one third, the same amount as if quadrupling CO2 north of 60° N. Both atmospheric and oceanic northward energy transport across 60° N are enhanced by up to 0.1 PW and 0.03 PW, respectively, and winter synoptic activity is increased over the Greenland, Norwegian, Iceland (GIN) seas. To a lesser extent the same happens when the CO2 concentration between 30 and 60° N is only increased to 1.65 times the reference value in order to consider the different size of the forcing areas. The increased northward energy transport, leads to Arctic sea ice reduction, and consequently Arctic amplification is present without Arctic CO2 forcing in all seasons but summer, independent of where the forcing is applied south of 60° N. South of the forcing area, both in the Arctic and northern mid-latitude forcing simulations, the warming is generally limited to less than 0.5 °C. In contrast, north of the forcing area in the northern mid-latitude forcing experiments, the warming amounts to generally more than 1 °C close to the surface, except for summer. This is a strong indication that the influence of warming outside of the Arctic on the Arctic is substantial, while forcing applied only in the Arctic mainly materializes in a warming Arctic, with relatively small implications for non-Arctic regions

The Impact of Signaling Commitment to Ethical AI on Organizational Attractiveness

As organizations drive the development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technologies, their commitment to ethical and humanistic values is critical to minimizing potential risks. Here, we investigate talent attraction as an economic incentive for organizations to commit to ethical AI. Based on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) literature and signaling theory, we present a mixed-methods research design to investigate the effect of ethical AI commitment on organizational attractiveness. Specifically, we i) identify signals of ethical AI commitment based on a review of corporate websites and expert interviews and ii) examine the effect of selected signals on organizational attractiveness in an online experiment. This short paper presents first results on ethical AI signals and details the next steps. Our research will contribute to the theoretical conceptualization of ethical AI as a part of CSR and support managers of digital transformation processes when weighing investments in ethical AI initiatives

Interactions mediated by a public good transiently increase cooperativity in growing Pseudomonas putida metapopulations

Bacterial communities have rich social lives. A well-established interaction involves the exchange of a public good in Pseudomonas populations, where the iron-scavenging compound pyoverdine, synthesized by some cells, is shared with the rest. Pyoverdine thus mediates interactions between producers and non-producers and can constitute a public good. This interaction is often used to test game theoretical predictions on the "social dilemma" of producers. Such an approach, however, underestimates the impact of specific properties of the public good, for example consequences of its accumulation in the environment. Here, we experimentally quantify costs and benefits of pyoverdine production in a specific environment, and build a model of population dynamics that explicitly accounts for the changing significance of accumulating pyoverdine as chemical mediator of social interactions. The model predicts that, in an ensemble of growing populations (metapopulation) with different initial producer fractions (and consequently pyoverdine contents), the global producer fraction initially increases. Because the benefit of pyoverdine declines at saturating concentrations, the increase need only be transient. Confirmed by experiments on metapopulations, our results show how a changing benefit of a public good can shape social interactions in a bacterial population

Citizen Deliberation in Germany: Lessons from the 'Bürgerrat Demokratie'

This article explores the capacity of randomly-selected, citizen deliberation procedures to deliver on their promise to generate inclusive and considered citizen judgements, connecting these to political authority and the broader public sphere. These 'mini-publics' are increasingly adopted in representative democratic systems. Germany is no exception and has been at the forefront of this trend. The article begins with a historical overview of citizen deliberation in Germany, followed by in-depth analysis of the pioneering case of the Bürgerrat Demokratie. This analysis shows mini-publics can produce more inclusive and considered citizen input into policy-making than self-selected participation, but highlights the need for attitudinal stratification in participation selection if mini-publics are to represent politically alienated citizens. Furthermore, it details how the Bürgerrat Demokratie's combination of an innovative, four-phase process design with civil society campaign expertise holds lessons for connecting citizen deliberation to both political authority and the public sphere without institutionalising the process